Now, Kansas

They failed the sacrament. They weren’t strong enough. Their levels were lacking. They fled into the night.

Fear nipped at their heals.

The hunters.

The prey.

They hide in the garbage as night turned to day.

“Charlie’s in trouble,” Britt whispered.

“She needs the sacrament,” Michael stared at Donald’s sword. His hand hurt from gripping it so tightly. He felt hollow.

His friend was dead.

Sunny.

Lincoln.

His friends were dead.

Didn’t the sacrament promise eternal life?

His mind didn’t let him think of the three young women that had made sport out of him and his friends.

“We have to go back,” Britt said.

Fear spiked in his heart at the thought of facing those women again.

“They won’t be there.”

“How do you know that?” he snapped.

Charlie coughed, blood dribbled out her mouth. “I’m not dead yet,” she managed to get out.

“They were there to save the people. There’s no reason for them to stick around. Charlie and I left a lot of sacrament in the upstairs apartment.”

He nodded and bent over to lift Charlie onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

She hissed in pain then sagged as consciousness left her again.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The three women were gone, but the sacrament remained.

Charlie would live and all three would be much stronger from all the lives they consumed and made a part of their strength.

Michael still felt hollow.

He couldn’t avoid seeing the faces and hearing the voices of the friends that he could no longer hunt with.

The song played in the background. It played through the thoughts of the three young Flesh Eaters, even if they didn’t consciously recognize it.

It played throughout the entire city under siege.

It tried to worm its way into the minds of four fighters far from home.

The walls around their minds proved too strong.

“More incoming!” Trevor pointed down the straight street.

“Fuck if I can see that far, but you haven’t been wrong yet,” Shrewed grunted.

They had dragged the dead bodies of their enemies to form a macabre wall in front of them.

The Meat Parade had attacked in small, sporadic groups starting just before dawn.

Judging by the sun’s position in the sky only a few hours had passed since the first fight.

“Yo, you guys any closer to finishing?” Shrewed called back to the small team of Mechanics frantically working to get the bus working.

They ignored him. They knew what was at stake. They had been a mere dozens of feet away from several fierce and terrifying fights. The thought of cannibal teeth and claws sinking into their bodies had lent them laser-like focus on the Quest.

Get the bus started. Earn Universal Points.

Fail?

You died… or worse.

“Leave them alone. They’re doing their best,” Marci said.

“Sure, whatever… but it’s been hours and I’m starting to think we should call it and get out of here before we gas out,” Shrewed shrugged.

Marci picked her large round shield off the ground and pointed her spear at the incoming cannibals. “I’ve got left enough for those trash.”

“Yeah, I’m good for a couple more. They aren’t as strong as I heard Flo was… right, Amber?” Trevor grabbed a few baseballs from the pack at his feet.

“My mana is running low,” Amber said.

“Alright, hang back to start and just jump in if it looks like me and Marci need help,” Shrewed said.

“What about me?” Trevor said.

“Grab your balls and get back on top of the bus. Don’t know why you came down here in the first place.”

“It was getting hot up there. White roof reflects the heat right back to me,” Trevor grumbled but grabbed his gear and hurried to the bus.

“Start slinging your balls around whenever you want!” Shrewed called out.

“Only five of them. Hopefully, they aren’t stronger than the ones we’ve already dealt with,” Marci said.

“They’ve all looked pretty ragged. I’m thinking they’ve been tangling with the church and what we’ve been getting are the survivors,” Shrewed said.

The Meat Parade ran toward them without any sense of cohesion. Their armor and clothes were bloody tatters or in some cases looked to have been partially torn off. None of them held weapons. Several had empty sheaths. One had a machete still in the sheath at their side. One had an M-4 dangling as an afterthought from the strap around their chest. They looked like a disparate collection of rabid animals rather than thinking beings.

A flaming baseball streaked over their heads and nailed one right in its too-wide mouth, shattering sharp teeth and causing the cannibal to tumble to the street and roll like a ragged doll with a face on fire.

Marci rushed to the low cannibal corpse wall and hit her shield with her spear. “Taunt!”

The cannibals zoomed in on the tall athletic woman.

Shrewed darted to her right with quickness that belied his stocky build. It was time to try out the Level 30 Skill he had just received a few fights ago. “Dirty Fighting.”

He moved and struck with a precision that he knew he couldn’t have managed on his own.

The iron knuckle guard of his trench knife popped a cannibal in the eye, bursting it like a grape. His knee spiked one between the legs. A blade slipped through another one’s teeth and hooked into the cheek, turning the head before cutting through the tough flesh. An iron-knuckled punch to a throat. A rabbit punch to the base of a neck. A stomp to the front of a knee.

He perfectly performed every dirty street fighting technique he had ever learned.

The cannibals were tough and resilient, a likely product of their class-gifted transformation.

A clawed hand blocked Shrewed’s downward stab by taking the blade through the palm and squeezing around the hilt and his hand. He tried to continue the push toward the cannibal’s eye but found himself stalemated.

Despite the many wounds the small cannibal still proved his equal in physical strength.

He probably had a hundred pounds on the wiry thing and he had the Enhanced Strength passive.

“Watch it!” Marci called out. “Taunt!”

A one-eyed cannibal had been about to give him a bloody necktie.

Marci drew the heat away from him and allowed him to stab his free blade into the cannibal’s remaining eye.

“Here! Let me return the favor!” Shrewed shifted his weight forward and instead of trying to drive the knife down into the cannibal he pushed forward and in doing so moved the cannibal’s right arm to a vertical position.

“Thanks!” Marci thrust her spear into the cannibal’s armpit.

A baseball whizzed between them, cutting into the throat of another cannibal.

The last one snarled, then gurgled as a steel blade emerged from her throat.

The body slid off and hit the ground to reveal Amber breathing heavily.

“Well done, everyone,” Shrewed said.

“But don’t get overconfident. I’m pretty sure these are the weaker ones,” Marci said.

“I don’t care! I’ll take it!” Trevor waved from atop the bus.

“Anyone level?” Shrewed said.

No one had.

The others were still stuck on the wrong side of 30.

“Probably soon then,” Shrewed regarded the corpses. “Notice anything weird?”

“They fought with teeth and claws even though those two have weapons,” Marci said.

“They didn’t use any spells or Skills like the earlier groups,” Amber added.

“Let that be a lesson, I guess. Going cannibal might make you stronger, tougher and faster with killer claws and teeth but at the cost of turning you into an animal.”

“No. You’re wrong about that. They’re worse than animals. They’re monsters!” Amber spat.

“I stand corrected.” Shrewed eyed he crew working on the bus. “Yo! You guys done yet?”

The song lingered as it sought to dig in deeper in those minds not protected by the wall. It failed to take hold. These minds had never truly felt the truth the song promised. Not when those that embraced the song had caused them much pain and grief.

The song traveled, though time and space didn’t truly hold dominion over it.

The song left the faithless and focused its weaving in the hearts and minds of those that had welcomed it completely.

These men faced a dire threat and drew strength and certainty from the song.

Eleven men sat around an ornate table in an ornately-decorated room.

There was space for twelve. A chair stood empty.

One of their number had gone forth to spread the word.

The men ranged in age from young to old.

United in a common belief. A faith given manifest in a truly tangible and quantifiable way for perhaps the first time in human history.

They believed in their Lord God and Jesus Christ.

The specifics of that relationship might’ve differed depending on the one asked, but it was close enough for them.

Some dressed in the most expensive suits, bespoke by the best Tailor in the city. Some settled for less expensive suits taken from the stores. Others wore whatever they felt most comfortable in. There were those that never went anywhere unless armed and armored. While one wore a robe of the finest purple fabric, inlaid with gold thread and other such opulence.

Even the rest thought that one was a bit much.

And yet despite their differences and petty jealousies they were united in one thing.

The eternal truth to their eternal church.

God was truly real.

He had sent his golden angels to sing his song of truth into their very minds.

And if that wasn’t proof enough to the unbeliever and the sinner, then their class shouted it to the world.

Pastor of Joyous Light.

“Three days!” an armored fist pounded on the table, “and we’ve already given up the walls.”

“On the third day he ro—”

“Not the time, Joel!”

“It is always time for the Lord, Pat!”

“Stop it, please. We need to focus.”

“The plan was working until that flying spi—”

“Brother, Billy… you’ve been asked to… moderate your language.”

“Screw you, Jim. There ain’t none of them coloreds around. I can say whatever I want. Anyway… we had them n—”

“Yeah, yeah. You had your human shields on the wall and see what happened. I was against that plan from the start.”

“Oh, right? Cause you knew a flying man would show up, save the ni— them and put the faithful to die in their place.”

“Maybe… I had this dream…”

Unity was fleeting.

Some saw the others as going too far. Others thought their fellows were guilty of not going far enough.

Preconceived beliefs and notions guided them as they tended to do when it came to humanity.

Some let the desire for superiority mingle with their hate into a toxic sludge.

Others saw their superiority as a right of birth. As a divine mandate to guide and control the inferior lest those sorts fall to sin.

It took honest and hard introspection to cure oneself of their worst aspects.

This was something no man at the table had yet come to understand.

“The enchanted arrowheads are at least proving somewhat useful.”

“They’d better after how much we paid that whore fa—”

“Damn it, Billy!”

“You’ll burn in perdition for your softness on these sin—”

“What’s past has passed. The Meat Parade is in our city. What do we do about it?”

“I hate that name…”

“Why is this even a question? We already have our defenses set around the faithful.”

“The ghettos…”

“Who cares about those?” a snort. “We put most of those people on the wall. The ones that made it are that flying man’s problem now.”

“We still have a number of their children and elderly in the shelters.”

“Could be good leverage against the flying man? He cared enough to help those people, so it stands to reason that he’d do the same for the rest.”

“Should’ve put them all on the wall…”

“The flying man did manage to keep the cannibals from breaching the walls for three days.”

“Then he disappeared and here we are.”

“With luck he died.”

“He doesn’t matter now. What’s important was the valuable time we bought through our struggles over the last few days. Each and every cannibal death, regardless of the killer, has brought the most Holy Quest closer to fulfillment. Our Universal Point total continues to rise. I think we can reach it soon with one last round of tithes from the faithful.”

“I’ll see to it quickly. Wouldn’t want the faithful to die before contributing their part in the ushering of God’s Dominion on this sinful world.”

“It is always darkest before the dawn, my brothers of the Light. Rejoice for soon we shall know salvation.”

“Then the world.”

They would be saved because they had faith.

Those that didn’t would burn and be cleansed by God’s golden light.

The song swelled with joy everlasting as it echoed in the room.

Each man trumpeted it loudly in their thoughts, some did it more consciously than others, but none truly understood.

The song strengthened the faithful, beckoned to the wavering and weakened the unprotected enemy.

There was no place in the mind of the unbeliever for the song.

No place in the joy and light for these minds filled with hunger.

The song only cared for those that it could fill.

For those that could in turn spread it to the rest.

Battles raged through the city.

Wielders of the joyous light clashed with those that hungered and devoured.

Reports of the flying man were fleeting, but his hoped for demise was proved false.

It was said that he swooped down in the darkest moments to slay the Meat Parade and to take people to safety.

The warriors of the faithful hated him.

For he only saved those that were inferior to them.

As for the faithful that didn’t fight?

They gave him thanks, but only in silence.

Though he saved their lives, everyone knew that it wouldn’t have been wise to speak loudly of it.

The seekers were always watching, listening for sinfulness.

A Spotter sat in the tallest building in the city.

Down at the base faithful warriors threw back the random assaults from the Meat Parade at great costs to both sides. Prayers and Light clashed with tooth and claw.

He sat on the highest level, moving from one room to another in order to gaze at the horizon several miles in the distance.

Intelligence had suggested that this Meat Parade was exponentially larger than any of the other ones in the past.

How much larger could it be?

Over 5000 had already breached the city walls.

Sure they had suffered immense casualties in the doing, but so had the faithful.

He didn’t know the numbers. He wasn’t high enough up the hierarchy for that privilege. All he had to go on were the rumors that the occasional messenger brought along with any updates to his orders.

He watched the horizon with eyes more powerful than any traditional battlefield optics.

Hours and hours of unending tedium.

“See anything?” one of the messengers attached to him said.

“Nope.”

“Figured.”

“Then why’d you ask,” he snapped.

His patience had been worn raw sometime yesterday.

Good ears meant he could hear the sounds of the battle through the many floors that separated him.

It didn’t provide him with confidence.

All it did was make it so that he’d know when the Meat Parade finally got past his defenders.

Then he’d have a simple choice.

Stay and fight or out the window for a quick, clean end.

He didn’t know if he had the courage to choose the right option.

“I hate awkward silence.”

“Then talk to the others,” he gestured to the other two messengers in the room.

“Nah, they suck.”

“Fuck you!” one of the other messengers spat.

He was about to tell them to shut up when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.

A faint cloud at the horizon.

“Telescopic Vision. See Over the Horizon.”

He followed the dust cloud to a convoy of vehicles that stretched out for miles like a cannibalistic serpent.

Then he noticed several clouds across the eastern expanse.

Different highways.

Same picture.

Multiple convoys many miles long.

He cursed an instant later and fell back over his chair.

The messengers jumped.

“Shitshitshitshit— huge army! More Meat Parade! Tell them!” he screamed at the messengers.

“Yeah, relax,” one said with a shiver. “We need details! How many? How far away?”

“I don’t fucking know! I can’t count them all in a second— there’s a lot!” he hated how high-pitched his voice sounded.

“Right, so a lot,” the messenger nodded.

The wide eyes and the slight quiver to the young man’s voice told the Spotter that he wasn’t the only one freaked out.

“They’re like a hundred miles away!”

They could all do the math.

Two hours, maybe three. Four if they were lucky.

The messengers ran out of the room.

He wanted to join him, but there were seekers down below and he had orders, so he continued to watch as the snaking convoys drew closer by the second.

The song did its best to bolster flagging courage. However, some were simply weak and it could only do so much.

The messengers ran.

They split into different routes to maximize the chances of getting the message back to the pastors.

One was a Runner. She was fast and nearly tireless. She could run a four minute mile pace for over an hour. She ran past several battles.

Unfortunately for her something about seeing a fleeing person triggered the cannibals.

Many abandoned their fights and gave chase.

She screamed and sprinted for all she was worth.

That was enough for a time to keep her free from her pursuers.

Until she turned one corner and ran right into a group of cannibals in the middle of devouring defeated faithful.

The second runner heard her screams.

He was a Freerunner and he had taken to the rooftops. He had loosely shadowed the young woman as a method to use her as bait to draw the cannibals away from him, thought that was something he was never going to admit to anyone. Especially after the cannibals got her.

He bounded over AC units and vents.

He leapt a ten foot gap between buildings.

The next building was shorter so he had to roll to protect his feet and legs from the impact.

He never felt freer than with the wind blowing through his hair as he leapt across nothing but open air.

A hard impact hit him in the side as he arced over another gap between buildings.

It threw him off-balance, but a Skill managed to salvage the jump so he only landed on the rooftop in a rough tumble rather than slamming into the edge and plummeting to the ground.

The roof shook.

He rolled over and saw his death… or worse.

Two cannibals.

One was a hulking monster.

The other was leaner with limbs that looked too long to belong on a human form.

“Where you off to in such a hurry?”

He could barely understand the words because of the cannibal’s grotesque mouth filled to bursting with sharp teeth.

He couldn’t breathe.

“We got your tongue? Don’t worry. We’ll loosen you up.”

A pale-skinned hand tipped with thick claws reached for him.

The last messenger, the young man that didn’t like awkward silences, was unlike the other two. He was a Messenger so he delivered one to the seekers in the buildings lobby.

“I thought that since it was so important that the pastors get this information as soon as possible and I saw you guys, so… who better to take it to them,” he smiled.

Faces carved out of stone glared down at him for a long moment.

“That’s your job,” the seeker growled.

He didn’t dare breathe.

“We’ll get you there,” the seeker said after a moment.

The word spread.

The Meat Parade wasn’t done. More were on their way.

The word spread.

The faithful prayed for salvation.

The word spread.

The faithful died.

The word spread.

The sinful died.

A team once six, now three, reinvigorated, but heavy of heart, stalked the streets to fill the hunger for the sacrament and vengeance.

A Blacksmith fought for his life with others like him as he swung an axe that seemed to shimmer in the air as it rose and fell like a hammer in the forges behind him.

Another team on neither side of the conflict over the city rejoiced as a long dead bus rumbled to life.

The pastors gathered around the spire. A ring of guards around them as the lucky one ventured forth.

They had failed to come to a consensus on who would hold the honor and had been reduced to drawing lots.

The lucky stepped into the spire.

Hours they waited for the man to reappear.

When he did he wasn’t alone.

A golden light filled with warmth and comfort turned night into day around the spire.

The golden-winged angel of their dreams floated above them sending the song in their souls to a crescendo of ecstasy.

“Messenger of the Lord, will you save us from the wicked beasts ravaging our home?” the lucky pastor genuflected before the angel.

It turned a beatific smile on them all.

If they noticed the sharp teeth they gave no indication.

The being’s words were as music.

“Rejoice for you have been found!”

All the choirs sang in their minds, bodies and souls.

“You are of the Dominion of Immortal Light and Joy! I will tender to you my most gentle of ministrations! I will grant you strength and together we will bring all under our dominion!”

The music swelled to a fever pitch.

They all roared with rapturous joy.

The word had spread.

“I hear a familiar song… I follow its string to… others… two others,” the golden angel’s head quirked to the west, “what symphony can I wrought through such… strong connections…” it drifted toward the west.

“Holy One! Wait! What are your commands? Where are you going?”

“My commands are simple. Fight! Let the song fill you with the strength to cleanse our dominion of the hungry deaf! As for me… I go in search of Honor.”

The air boomed in the golden angel’s wake as it streaked to the west.

The stunned faithful picked themselves up off the ground and went forth to holy battle.

All across the city those that carried the Joyous Light within in them were bolstered to new heights.

Power grew.

Spells became more potent and effective.

Skills pushed, then broke through limits.

Would it last?

The faithful didn’t know and didn’t care.

The only thing that mattered was the terrifying cannibals became… less so.

The song didn’t only affect the fighters. It reached all of the faithful.

They emerged from their homes and shelters in the thousands. Young and old with whatever they could get hands on as weapons. They fought without thought or fear.

They died with the song of joy in their heads.

Monsignor gasped.

“What is it?” Nila said.

“Something… something familiar. Like faith. A very strong spike that is sustaining itself, but it’s— not— it’s falsehoods coated with a veneer of truth. Strong, solid at first sight, but scratch the surface and you learn what it really is.” She crossed herself. “Get ready. I’m afraid that I feel the source heading in our direction.”

“That don’t sound good. Don’t like when you talk all biblical and shit,” Shrewed grunted.

“Nila!” Jimenez rushed out of the bus wide-eyed and gasping for air. “My danger sense is going off! I’ve never felt it this bad. I don’t know if it’s cause its more powerful now or— I don’t know. It wasn’t this bad when I was in Frisco or Manila.”

“Oh…” Trevor exchanged a look with Amber.

“… that’s definitely bad,” Amber finished.

Nila wasn’t stupid. She had been dreading this. “Stay in the bus and please protect my baby,” she said to Jimenez. “Monsignor—”

“I’ll get the people ready. Whatever this is,” Monsignor shook her head, “if it is that which we’ve been waiting for… we’ll be ready. You won’t fight it alone.”

“I’m hoping none of us will have to,” Nila said. “Cal will handle it.” She thought very hard at Cal, but didn’t get an immediate answer. “Damn it… Shrewed, the Furies are patrolling a few blocks to the north, please send the flare.”

He shot the bright red beacon into the dark sky.

Elsewhere.

A flying man wavered in the air.

The discordant sound tore through his mental wall and sent him reeling.

He nearly lost his hold on the handful of people he was flying to safety.

“Too close…”

He lowered the people to a nearby rooftop and told them where they needed to go.

Then took a moment to rebuild his mental wall and send out a warning to Nila.

He knew the sound.

The music that was a song.

The song that wasn’t music.

Zalthyss had arrived.

Westward.

The air broke before him as he sped toward his most precious people.